Gas Leak Disrupts Local Businesses
This gas leak caused a huge disruption for area businesses. It forced the closure and evacuation of nearly a dozen businesses around that intersection. Some of those were popular restaurants closed during their lunchtime rush. KLBK's Michaela MacDonald has more.
-->By: Michaela MacDonald
Updated: January 31, 2013
Chipotle, City Bank, Starbucks are just a few of the businesses forced to evacuate because of this morning's gas leak.
"They are all mostly commercial businesses I don't think it's affected any residential," said Marinda Heinrich of Atmos Energy.
Heinrich says they decided to close nearby businesses right when they got the call that a six inch gas line was leaking. But even businesses outside of the evacuation zone were struggling.
"Since everything is blocked off we are just going to reschedule appointments just keep everyone, you know somewhat sane, so clients don't freak out or anything," said Ashley Fleenor, of Salon Sculpt.
Salon Sculpt was not told to evacuate, but having the street blocked off drove away their customers.
"Kind of we are having to reschedule all of out appointments on a Thursday its kind of busy but its better to be safe than sorry," said Brooke Hayes.
Amazing Tans right down the street says Thursday is a busy day for them as well. The fire department let them stay open, but they weren't allowed to turn on the tanning beds.
"Its actually closed, not closed, they didn't evacuate us at all, but we can't have anybody tan at all and Thursdays are our busiest day so its not really that good for us," said Chanelle Nicely.
Once the gas line was repaired, Atmos Energy had to go into each individual business, turn back on their meter and do a pressure check to make sure everything was safe. They said it took most of the afternoon to do all those checks.
